


On attachment elsewhere

by imsfire



Series: Paths of hurt and darkness [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, warning for suicide attempt (reported)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 15:31:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9826547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: The rare occasions she sees Cassian, he seems to be hanging on.





	

One of the many things the rebellion does not have adequate funds for is psychological therapy for everyone who needs it.  Like most of the troops, Jyn toughs it out.  She’s a hardened soldier, after all, a fighter since her childhood.   She battles through as she has always done, living on hopes and prayers. 

The rare occasions she sees Cassian, he seems likewise to be hanging on.  He’s quiet, but he does talk, he does touch her, he does find words, carefully and painfully, to cherish her.  He holds on, and she holds on in him.  Sometimes it seems it’s just a thread of a prayer, a fingernail’s grip on life.  They will fight and they will win, for everyone who’s fought and died, and for the future they never realised till now that they might have. 

They soldier on.  There are things to be won more important by far than their individual lives; freedom, justice, the end of oppression.  A hope as red as blood binding them to the future. 

He goes where he is sent and so does she.  Mission after mission; she goes, serves, comes home, hoping each time to see him, to have a little time with him.  Each time she doesn’t get to see him with her own eyes and touch him with her hands, she does at least know he came back safe, because someone always tells her, sooner or later.  Mission after mission it goes on.  The time they are given together is always so brief, and they are always so tired, weary to the bones, to the heart, soul-weary, grieved and broken with it.

She can still count the number of nights she has slept in his arms, in the three years since Scarif, and only go round her fingers twice.

Endor is saved and the one astonished word she hears is victory; faces as exhausted as her own all around her, saying that word, looking in disbelief at a picture of new chances and free lives, and hope.  It really is happening.

Jyn waits as the days go by, for Cassian to come back from his final deployment, for them to have the chance they’ve given everything to win.  She waits, and then waits more; and after the days it is weeks that go by.  She asks after him and is told he is still on attachment elsewhere.  Asks again, and again, and it is months; and he’s still on attachment.

She wants to know where; and why, and what he is doing.  There’s an armistice, there are talks to frame a peace concordance, this _is_ the future they’ve waited for and struggled onwards, through despair and self-loathing and so much consciousness of things ill-done.  This is what they nearly gave their sanity to reach.  Cassian has the right to come home.  He’s fought for all this, harder than anyone.  He’s the one person she knows who has always stayed; his loyalty, his integrity, unwavering.  She remembers when she thought his embrace would be the last thing she knew before all else was burned away.

But no-one will tell her where he’s been assigned, in the peace, or when he will be sent home.

Three months in, one bitter cold day in the rebuilt base on Hoth, with the glass standing at 30 below zero, she snaps. She marches to the door of Davits Draven’s quarters and pounds on it and demands the general tell her.  Shouts, and then begs.  No matter what he thinks of her, she’s done her duty and so has Cassian; and all she wants is to know where he’s been sent.  He’s the only thing left to her from all of her life.

Draven’s face is as frozen as the wasteland outside.  He speaks in a strange, numb voice.  “Sergeant Erso, Captain Andor – Cassian - Cassian has had a breakdown.  He made multiple suicide attempts while on his last posting.  He’s in the asylum on Perralt.”

“No.  No, no, he can’t be…” 

“I’m sorry.  I’m afraid I don’t know when he’ll be released.  I don’t know – I don’t know if he ever will be.  I wish I had better news for you, Sergeant.”

She would never have expected to find sympathy in Draven, but his hard face is a mask of sorrow and pain and when she staggers and almost falls he catches her.  Her helps her to a seat and waits patiently, one hand gentle on her shoulder, while she hyperventilates and tries not to cry, and fails. 

“I’m sorry, Jyn, I’m so sorry…”


End file.
